SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Tuesday's debate could prove decisive in the race for the White House, and of all the issues that former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris will dispute - economy, reproductive rights, education - one issue will be closely watched at home and abroad, foreign policy. We have invited three NPR correspondents to discuss the regions they cover and consequences of U.S. policies there - Eyder Peralta in Mexico City. Eyder, thanks for being with us.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
SIMON: Aya Batrawy in Dubai. Thank you, Aya.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: And John Ruwitch, who covers China. John, thank you.
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: Good morning.
SIMON: Eyder, let's begin with you, because, of course, the region you cover is so directly tied into what's a key domestic issue in this election, immigration. What are you going to be listening for on Tuesday?
PERALTA: Yeah, I mean, if you listen to the last debate - former President Trump and President Biden - the only way that Latin America came up was through immigration and drug trafficking. And I would bet we'll hear the same this time around. We'll hear a fairly shallow debate that focuses on immigration enforcement - who's tough, who's not tough. But I bet what we won't hear is a discussion of root causes. And the reason so many people are on the move here in this hemisphere is because in many ways, Latin America is on fire. We have all-out chaos in Haiti, a political crisis in Venezuela, collapsed economy in Cuba. In Nicaragua, we have a state that keeps banishing all of its opponents, and in El Salvador, we have the rise of this new-age authoritarian leader. Like in Europe, the post-Cold-War order is shifting, and it's causing chaos, and migration is just a symptom. I would like to hear a diagnosis from former President Trump and Vice President Harris.
SIMON: Aya, let me get you to take a look at the Middle East. What do the countries in the region think of as the real current policy differences between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?
BATRAWY: I think it really depends who you ask. So if you look obviously at the biggest issue right now in the region, which is the war in Gaza, many Israelis really do see a partner and a friend in President Joe Biden, who has stood by Israel throughout this war. And that continues through - you can hear it in Harris' words. But also, President Trump is seen as a staunch ally of Israel. You know, he moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory. So there's not much seen as so different when it comes to Israel, though when you look at what the Arab countries view, what the Middle Eastern countries view, like the Egypt or the Gulf countries, they see - there are some differences in policies, but overall, especially when you ask the Palestinians, they see more of the same, which is staunch, unequivocal support for Israel.
SIMON: What about the increased military presence in the Middle East? How's that being viewed in the Gulf states and Iran?
BATRAWY: Well, if you recall, like, at the beginning of Biden's presidency, he had really wanted to pivot towards China and sort of disengage the U.S. a bit from the Middle East, from Afghanistan and Iraq and all these wars that the U.S. had been mired in. And this war has really dragged the U.S. back in. And so here I am in the Gulf. You know, there's a lot of concern about the attacks that are happening on ships in the Red Sea by the Houthis. There's a lot of concern about Iran and how it might respond to the assassination of Hamas' leader, when he was there, by Israel. There's a lot of concern about what could come next because no one can really control right now. No one has control over the levers of where this is headed, and we still don't see a cease-fire happening, and so things can really, really deteriorate quickly, whether that's before the elections or after.
SIMON: John Ruwitch, what's your sense of what China sees as being at stake in this election?
RUWITCH: Well, for Beijing, this election is being seen in the context of the broader relationship and the trends in that relationship. And the China-U.S. relationship has been increasingly competitive, increasingly adversarial in recent years. And Beijing believes that there is this sort of broad support in the U.S. for a tough-on-China approach. To the extent that China comes up in the debate, it seems pretty likely that it'll be in a sort of muscle-flexing, almost chest-thumping type of way. I asked Ryan Hass about this. He's with the Brookings Institution.
RYAN HASS: The leadership in Beijing views both as problematic to China's long-term interests and ambitions. And I think they assume that America's domestic politics will provide a constraint on the decision-making space of any president in the current context.
RUWITCH: That said, he thinks there are differences that Beijing is parsing between these two candidates. Trump, you know, has been talking about imposing new and sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods. Harris has said a lot less about China and is less well known, although her foreign policy positions, including on China, appear to be pretty consistent with the Biden administration's policies. Either way, Beijing is planning for all kinds of possible post-election scenarios, the least likely of which is that relations are going to miraculously improve under a new president.
SIMON: John, what do you think Beijing's listening for when it comes to the issue of Taiwan? The U.S. came to the defense of Ukraine, after all.
RUWITCH: Yeah, you know, Taiwan is interesting. There does seem to be some daylight between Harris and Trump on this. As far as Trump's concerned, he seems to be pretty transactional on Taiwan. And he has said in the past that Taiwan is quite far from the U.S. and very close to China. He's also questioned why the U.S. would help Taiwan defend itself at all, given that it's so far away, and suggests that Taiwan should be paying for it. Harris, again, hasn't said a ton on Taiwan, and what she has said over the years has been quite close to Biden administration policy on Taiwan. She's met Xi Jinping once. And actually, a group of Democratic congresswomen visited Taiwan in August and said that she's likely to continue with Biden's policies towards Taiwan, which is interesting because Biden has explicitly said the U.S. would help defend Taiwan.
SIMON: Let me ask each of you, are there issues in the region you cover that are just not getting the attention that they might merit right now? Let's begin with you, Eyder Peralta, in Mexico City.
PERALTA: Mexico - I mean, it just doesn't get enough attention. And right now this country is on the cusp of amending its constitution. Critics say that it's going to mean the end of judicial independence. And Mexico is not just a neighbor to the United States. It is also its biggest trading partner. These decisions could have huge economic consequences for the free trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, which is also, by the way, the biggest market in the world. So beyond democracy, we should be hearing about Mexico because of economic ties with the United States and what this constitutional amendment could mean to those ties.
SIMON: Aya Batrawy in Dubai.
BATRAWY: You know, the No. 1 issue that has constantly come up, especially with a Democratic president, with regional leaders here and one that the U.S. was proud to bring up was human rights. And I think that that has completely taken a back seat now with this war. You know, we don't hear anymore about human rights concerns with Saudi Arabia. We hear about normalization. We don't hear anymore about human rights concerns in Egypt. We hear about Egypt as a mediator and its importance. And these human rights crackdowns are continuing. They haven't slowed down. There are people serving, you know, decades in prison over tweets and social media posts and journalists being jailed. And the thing is the U.S. also has lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of so many of these human rights activists who may have looked to the U.S. to advocate for their cause and to speak out because of the huge civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip, much of that by U.S. weapons.
SIMON: John Ruwitch, what's the view in Beijing?
RUWITCH: I think something that's very interesting to watch is going to be Chinese influence operations. You know, there's new research out over the past week or so by an intelligence company called Graphika that says there's a Chinese state-backed social media influence operation that's impersonating U.S. voters. But get this - they're not out to influence the election one way or another for Harris or Trump. They don't have a preferred candidate, apparently. They're just trying to sow discord, to discredit the candidates on both sides, to portray the U.S. as a declining power with weak leaders and a failing system of government. And this is linked to that broader competition between the U.S. and China that is going to outlast the next president and probably the president after that.
SIMON: Let me ask you all to weigh in. Does U.S. opinion and power have the same weight that it used to?
PERALTA: I mean, Scott, in Latin America, the U.S. used to run Latin America. They orchestrated coups and installed puppet governments. And I think today the U.S. looks paralyzed in this region. In a lot of ways, they have been unable to effect change in Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro, who the U.S. has called illegitimate for years, is still president. And in Haiti, where the U.S. has been an occupying force in the past, they have been ineffectual first at organizing an international force to go into the country, and now they have been unable to get that force to actually do something to change what's happening, the chaos in Haiti on the ground.
SIMON: Aya Batrawy?
BATRAWY: You know, the U.S. is still the main supplier of weapons to this region, and it continues to be the superpower here in the Middle East. However, you have seen Saudi Arabia and the UAE buck the U.S. on several policy issues and turn to China and turn increasingly to Russia and keep their business open and their doors open to Russia, not engage in sanctions as the U.S. would have liked them to do. And also with China, China, don't forget, brokered the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It wasn't the U.S. that did that.
SIMON: Yeah. And John Ruwitch, that feeds into the China you cover, doesn't it?
RUWITCH: Yeah, it does. In Asia, the U.S. has absolutely been a force for security and stability over the past x number of decades. The competition with China, though, makes a lot of other countries in the region nervous, right? They want the U.S. there for security, which China wants less of, but they want to continue to trade with China and have China be their biggest trade partner. The friction between China and the U.S. these days, this idea of forcing countries, partners, allies, others to choose one or the other makes a lot of countries in the region nervous.
SIMON: NPR's Eyder Peralta in Mexico City, Aya Batrawy in Dubai and China correspondent John Ruwitch, thank you all so much for being with us.
PERALTA: Thank you, Scott.
BATRAWY: Thanks so much, Scott.
RUWITCH: You bet, Scott.
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